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N.Korea says cooling tower blast was goodwill move
04 Jul 2008 09:44:22 GMT
 Source: Reuters
SEOUL, July 4 (Reuters) - North Korea said on Friday it had done more than its part under a disarmament deal by blowing up the cooling tower at its nuclear plant last week and called on other parties to live up to their end of the six-way agreement.

North Korea toppled the tower at its plutonium-producing reactor a week ago in a symbolic show of its commitment to the deal, which offered economic and diplomatic incentives for the communist state in return for nuclear disarmament steps.

"This is an act that we took ahead of the next phase of dismantling nuclear facilities and is a measure of goodwill that shows with action our commitment to denuclearise," the North's official KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

"The responsibilities of all the parties under the ... agreement must be accurately completed for discussions on the next phase to take place soundly," the unnamed spokesman said.

Impoverished North Korea repeated its demand for a quicker dispersal of aid that was part of the deal it reached with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

The energy-starved North started receiving shipments of heavy fuel oil last year under the deal after it froze operations at its Yongbyon nuclear plant and began to take apart the ageing facility.

Diplomatic sources said a new round of the six-way talks could take place as early as next week, after a summit in Japan of the Group of Eight leading economies.

North Korea last week submitted an inventory of its atomic programme, and the United States moved to take the North off its list of state sponsors of terrorism and lift financial sanctions.

Experts say key questions remain about North Korea's nuclear weapons and proliferation, and global powers still need to verify the statements made in the nuclear declaration, which details the amount of plutonium the secretive state had produced.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the North still had not answered U.S. suspicions of enriching uranium for weapons and proliferating nuclear technology. (Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Jon Herskovitz and Alex Richardson)


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